


a candle at my chest and a hand on his knee

by buckybunnyteeth



Category: The Losers (2010)
Genre: Fluff and Angst, Gen, M/M, Post-Movie: The Losers (2010), Short & Sweet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-10
Updated: 2018-07-10
Packaged: 2019-06-08 02:48:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15233688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/buckybunnyteeth/pseuds/buckybunnyteeth
Summary: Cougar needs Aisha to know what will happen if she ever hurts Jensen again.





	a candle at my chest and a hand on his knee

“I woke up and he was screaming, I’d left him dreaming.

I roll over and shake him tightly and whisper.

If they want you, oh, they’re gonna have to fight me.”

  * Laura Marling (Night Terror)



 

Cougar is sitting on the arm of the couch in complete stillness when Aisha walks past him into the kitchen. It’s the middle of the night and the room is almost completely dark.

She hums something to herself, a song that was on the radio earlier, and he knows that she hasn’t seen him.  The light in the kitchen turns on and he doesn’t move.

He doesn’t move as he listens to her make herself a midnight snack, eat it, and then wash her plate leaving no evidence of her activities. Jenifer Jensen will have no idea the sanctity of her fridge has been broken.

The light switches off and Aisha comes out.

He knows the moment she sees him because she goes tense, a small exhalation coming out when he is sure a scream wanted to, and her hand flies to the knife she forgot to bring with her. Her eyes flick over him in a cataloging sense- _hat, shirtless, hair, must be Cougar_ \- and she relaxes. Slightly.

She opens her mouth to speak but he speaks first.

“If you hurt him again. I will kill you.”

The words seem so much louder in the silent house, stilling the air in the room and carrying a kind of gravity that only comes with an honest vow.

Aisha’s eyes, corvid eyes, turn to steel.

She forces her mouth into a smirk, but Cougar sees past it. In the few days they have known Aisha she interacted with all of them in some significant way, all the Losers except Cougar. It reveals how she feels about him, about what he can do, rather plainly.

“Clay wouldn’t let you.”

Cougar smirks, a true smirk, and it must flash in the dark from the way Aisha’s face goes blank.

“Clay wouldn’t know.”

In the midnight hush of Jensen’s sisters sitting room, the night seems to stretch out in a silent forever as the most dangerous woman he has ever met considers him. He’s not afraid of her. He can barely stop himself from hating her.

“He’d find out.”

Cougar shrugs.

“He wouldn’t forgive you for it.”

Cougar remains silent.

Aisha, considers her words, rolling her lip between her teeth. _Or would he?_ , flashes plainly across her features, _has he before?_

“You need me to find Max.”

“No.”

“You do,” she hisses, “Without me-”

“We’d manage,” he shrugs, “Ending will stay the same.”

Aisha stares him down. She doesn’t trust him, she’s maybe even a little afraid of him. He took no pleasure in scaring someone normally. But she had shot Jake. To know he intimidated her bought him an amount of pleasure, a small revenge.                                                                                  

He nods up the stairs.

“Don’t give me a reason,” he tells her in his softest most unsettling voice, “Or do. You won’t see the bullet coming.”

Aisha just stares at him.

“You care about him that much?”

There is venom in her voice as she hisses the words out through her teeth.

Cougar doesn’t reply.

“Why?” she huffs, letting her anger out now, “Why would you-?”

“ _Tio_ Cougar.”

Aisha jumps as Jack appears at the bottom of the stairs. Her blonde hair is tied back in messy braids and she is clutching a stuffed Godzilla against her body as she rubs her sleepy eyes.

“ _Mi cielito_ ,” he says softly, with the grin he uses only for her and her uncle.

“Will you make me warm milk?” She asks, blearily stepping into the living room, her footed pajamas making very little sound against the floorboards, “I can’t go back to sleep, and I can’t use the microwave.”

“ _Si_ , I’ll make your milk.”

He stands and takes her outstretched hand. He stands between her and Aisha and raises an eyebrow at the woman.

Her eyes flick between him and Jack and a look overtakes her face.

Understanding and then something else. Something sad.

“Oh,” she whispers, “Oh…”

Without another word, she slips past them and up the stairs.

“Is she okay?” Jack asks with a yawn as he leads her to the kitchen, “She looked at you funny.”

“She’s …,” Cougar says as he pours out the milk, “She has no _Familia_.”

“Familia,” Jack repeats, “That means family.”

Cougar smiles at her softly. She’s been practicing her Spanish.

“Si.”

Jack seems to run out of questions then. Cougar is glad for it. He dose not know how he would explain that Aisha is a killer, a mercenary, who will surely kill him and his team the second they are no longer useful to her. That she is the one who caused the wound on her uncle that she had almost cried over earlier.

He makes her milk, sits with her as she drinks half of it, and then catches her when she falls asleep and proceeds to fall out of her chair. She snuggles up to his chest with her toy and snores.

Cougar tips out the milk and takes her upstairs back to bed, leaving her with a kiss on her head and a small prayer for sweet dreams.

He then treads soundlessly down the hall and slips back into his room.

Jake is curled up under the covers, unmoved from how he left him.

He takes off his hat and slips into bed, curling around Jensen with well-practiced seamlessness.

Jensen makes a snuffling noise and drops a heavy arm around his shoulders.

“Why’d you leave?” he grumbles as he pulls him tighter, pressing his face into Cougars hair, “You’re warm.”

Cougar thumbs along Jakes' cheek and relaxes into his embrace.

“Jack wanted a glass of milk.”

Jake chuckles.

“She’s banned from the microwave,” Cougar can feel his grin as surely as if it were on his own face, “She melted a barbie in it last year.”

Cougar huffs an amused sound and keeps stroking his cheek, willing him back to sleep.

He thinks that Jensen has drifted off again until he speaks again.

“You were threatening her, weren’t you?” he asks in a voice much more awake than it was a moment ago, “Aisha, not Jack.”

Cougar says nothing.

“Clay won’t like that.”

“She didn’t shoot Clay.”

Jensen draws back to look at him. Without his glasses on, and with his face cast in the light of the moon, he looks much too serious.

“Carlos,” Jensen sighs, “I know it scared you and if it had been you who was shot I would have hunted her through every dog house, outhouse and cat house to get my sworn revenge … but we need her to get to Max. Without her, it would be much harder, and I’m betting much louder.”

Cougar knows this to be true. He sighs and leans his forehead against Jensen’s.

He isn’t good with words, has never been the kind of man who knows what to say. He doesn’t know how to say that he’d woken up a couple hours ago with a scream on his lips at a nightmare where Aisha had hit his chest and not grazed his arm. Doesn’t know how to say that the dream scared him to his very core, shook his soul, and fear and driven him downstairs to keep watch over the sleeping house.

Aisha coming downstairs had been a coincidence, but his fear and anger had stirred in him again and he couldn’t hold his tongue. He couldn’t let her think he would be silent, he would be calm or merciful if she ever hurt Jake again.

He doesn’t know how to say he loves Jake so much the thought of him dying scares him more than anything else he can imagine. More than Max. More than the hell he is surely bound for.

“I was scared,” he admits, “She needed to know the price of scaring me. Of hurting you.”

Jensen rolls his eyes.

“Okay, Sargent Serious,” he laughs, kissing him quickly and softly, “I can’t stay mad at you. You know I get hot and bothered when you get all protective.”

Cougar rolls his eyes and pulls Jensen in for a kiss, a proper kiss that makes Jensen shiver and whimper against him.

“Totally unfair,” Jensen pants as they break apart, “You can’t kiss me like that when my niece is literally down the hall, dude. Totally not sportsmanlike.”

Cougar grins and kisses him again.

**Author's Note:**

> this happened because someone commented on my last fic that there is a lack of Cougar's pov in fic and I haven't been able to think about anything else. So just a short sweet fic of Cougar, making threats and looking after his family.


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